Thursday, 31 March 2011

I recently considered sending my complete GEDCOM to Ancestry, but restricting access by not agreeing to the default "Allow others to see my tree as a public member tree"

When I unselected the option some paragraphs popped up informing of the benefits on which I'd be missing out.

Then I had a look at the Submission Agreement which you have to select for the upload to proceed.

What I read shocked me.

Despite deselection of the public member tree option I would still be agreeing that "Ancestry may reproduce, compile, and distribute, all information about non-living individuals in your submitted GEDCOM file."

Despite later statements about private member trees it's not clear that they over-ride Ancestry's right in the clause above.

It appears that Ancestry continue to have the right to use the GEDCOM submitted even if the data is deleted by the member. perhaps because an error is found.

Since most of the gedcom records can be found in "public" sources, does it really matter that your information is private? Pictures are uniques, and family stories are also, but I would rather draw out similar items from cousins, Ellen

And Ancestry's definition of non-living includes anyone without dates. I found myself and my family on somebody's tree which they had uploaded without any dates, so I was considered "non-living". Ancestry did change myself and my immediate family to living upon my request but they would not change my living cousins, aunts, uncles, etc. without a request from a closer family member.

What we need is a sort of GEDCOM Parser that takes a GEDCOM apart, strips out all the information you don't want to publish, then puts the GEDCOM back together. Mental note - Must mention this to Mark Tucker for his GenPerfect idea.

Many sites worry me, including Ancestry, Facebook, Genesrunited, etc., they have their uses but you can lose control over your research data.

I have found my data and photo's all over the place, with no permission from me. Genesreunited is the worst offender (now owned by Findmypast.co.uk group) closely followed by Ancestry.

I know that people have copied my info, they still have the simplistic error that I embedded! Easy to correct if you took the trouble to do a basic check on the data.

I want to publish all my data but don't want "Surname Miners" to misuse it. I have actually found my whole tree in someone elses online tree with no connection whatsoever to any other part of their tree(s); this person had over 14,000 relations!!

I think what Ellen says has a lot of credibility. If you want unknown cousins, with information you don't have, to connect with you, then why worry about the 'Jeanealogists'.

Tony

Footnote - I use a combination of TribalPages, Ancestry, Genesreunited and WikiTree to share my information. But I make sure I fully understand how their protection works first.